Bulls are already a cluster ****...
- Thread starter NorthCyd
- Start date
Could definitely made that argument, they at least recognized it and made a change at GM, and got one who has a solid track record too.
I think they've been really well run since Marks took over though. They were screwed by decisions made by the previous front office but they have a good coach, and they've done well with the limited avenues they have for improvement.
But Rob Hennigan was thisclose to cracking the code! It's all about hybrids these days.
Those hybrid trades, those would have totally changed the franchise.
It’s funny, Brad Stevens has a worse winning percentage than Fred. The only difference is Brad knew he was going into a rebuild, Fred was sold that they were going to get him players to succeed.
GarPax is the worst. Should have fired them after last year. Fred saved their jobs by somehow coaching that team to a playoff berth and playing the Celtics tough in rd 1.
If he believed them, he was the only one.
Media polls and polls of NBA coaches, players, and front office personnel routinely rate Fred as one of the worst, if not the worst, coaches in the NBA...
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19024161/coach-ratings-1-30
That was after he made the playoffs twice and before, you know, his players started punching each other and the Bulls might win 20 games this year (if lucky).
Things are only going to head south from here from his already abyssal reputation.
See my response to the quote above -- I love you to death, Fred, but evidently he is not that level of basketball mind. His NBA job is the Peter principle in action.
There is a reason few college coaches go to the NBA, even really good or even legendary ones like Izzo and Calipari, and few that do have any measure of success. Fred was an elite college coach but is out of his league against Kerr, Pop, D'Antoni, and the like.
I think Fred just outmatched college coaches on two levels...
(1.) He noticed the market undervaluing transfer players. It seems the market has since corrected that, but the core of Fred teams were always 3* and low 4* guys like Melvin, Matt, Monté, Naz, and Georges, which he could have kept pulling even if he never managed to start landing the Vaughn and Diallo level of recruits. He proved he could compete with modest talent.
(2.) Fred brought that "chargin' bull with a bottle rocket up its butt" offense to college first. For the college game, pace-and-space was a revelation, but NBA coaches were already way ahead of him on implementing that offense at the next level, and now it is ubiquitous across the league. The college game has caught up, too, and other programs are doing it.
It is similar to what is happening to Thibs in Minnesota. Thibs has a reputation as a hard-nosed defensive guru, but everything is running the same defense in the league now and every offense knows how to break it in ways they did not during the Bulls' heyday around five years ago. The ecosystem reacted, Thibs has not, hence Minnesota has been a bad defensive team. I fear what Fred brought, which was once innovative, is now kind of par for the course. The best coaches -- Belichick and Pop immediately come to mind -- are not married to something.
They are constantly reinventing themselves.
Nope. Fred missed doing a lot more by a few eyelashes.
However, consider the trajectory of the program -- we won the Big 12 tournament twice, we were routinely beating Kansas, we were a few bounces away from unseating them as the Big 12 champions his last season, and we had two teams that were good enough to beat anybody in the nation and make deep tournament runs if not for the UAB game and how Georges broke his foot against UNC-Central. He had a legitimate top 10-15 program rolling in Ames and, had he committed to the college game and recruiting (or just hiring some assistants to handle that for him), he could have kept it rolling forever. I think we all sensed that intuitively.
He could have kept us in that echelon. Glad Prohm is bringing us back, though, and has actually committed to do what it takes to build a program for the long-haul.
Media polls and polls of NBA coaches, players, and front office personnel routinely rate Fred as one of the worst, if not the worst, coaches in the NBA...
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19024161/coach-ratings-1-30
Man, our Hilton banner guys Hornacek and Hoiberg are 29th and 30th in this poll. Yeesh. I think they're both intelligent guys and Hornacek got a lot of votes for coach of the year his 1st season at Phoenix. Well, I, for one still pull for them both.
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19024161/coach-ratings-1-30
Man, our Hilton banner guys Hornacek and Hoiberg are 29th and 30th in this poll. Yeesh. I think they're both intelligent guys and Hornacek got a lot of votes for coach of the year his 1st season at Phoenix. Well, I, for one still pull for them both.
It's been reported before that Portis imagines his mom being punched and that makes him play pissed off. Pretty messed up.
Update on the Clustertown Bulls: https://www.yahoo.com/sports/bulls-nikola-mirotic-4-6-172722831.html
Portis is suspended 8 games and Mirotic is out 4-6 weeks.
Portis is suspended 8 games and Mirotic is out 4-6 weeks.
I would love to be in Fred's shoes making 25 million guaranteed coaching a team that won't have any expectations whatsoever during the entire time he's there.
And after you've put your 5 years of sucking in, just walk away with your 25 million in the bank and laugh all the way to your mansion and sit back and enjoy the rest of your life.
And after you've put your 5 years of sucking in, just walk away with your 25 million in the bank and laugh all the way to your mansion and sit back and enjoy the rest of your life.
I see that he started their opener. I saw one of the early summer league games on TV - maybe the opener - and my initial thought was that he didn't look very good but it seems he's settled in.
I checked ESPN's in-game box score for the Bulls opener vs. Toronto - they were already down 15+ - and it had Bobby Portis on the roster and "Has not entered game" next to it. They don't have "Doesn't play well with teammates" or "Hasn't punched anyone yet" as options, I'm guessing.
